Marcus La Rue Harrison of New York.Born at Groton, New York, 11 April 1830.Appointed from Arkansas, Captain, 1st Arkansas
Cavalry, 10 July 1862Colonel, 7 August 1862Breveted Brigadier General of Volunteers,
13 March 1865 for gallant and meritorious services during the war.Honorably mustered out of the volunteer service,
23 August 1865Died 27 October 1890 in Alexandria County,
Virginia. He was buried in Section 1 of Arlington National
Cemetery.Courtesy of of Arkansas History & Culture
(As Originally Published In "Arkansas Biography: A Collection of Notable
Lives."

Marcus LaRue Harrison organized the First Arkansas
Cavalry Regiment (Union) and served as its Colonel during the Civil War.
After the war, he had a hand in a number of Reconstruction projects, including
the reestablishment of Arkansas’s postal service, politics, and railroad
promotion. The city of Harrison (Boone County) was named for him.

M. LaRue Harrison was born on April 1, 1830,
in Groton, New York, the son of Marcus Harrison, a Presbyterian minister
and anti-slavery activist, and Lydia House. Because his father had to move
often, Harrison’s childhood was spent in various locations in New York,
Michigan, and Illinois. By 1850, he had settled in Nashville, Illinois,
and married Rebecca Axley, the first of his three wives. The couple had
two sons.

Harrison’s first wife died in 1861. Soon thereafter,
Harrison married Medora Bigby of Springfield, Missouri, whom he divorced
in 1873, gaining custody of their daughter. Later in 1873, Harrison married
Mollie Merrill, a Baltimore widow, with whom he had one son.

During the 1850s, Harrison became involved
in the rapidly expanding railroad business, working first for the Chicago,
Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, and then the Burlington and Missouri River
Railroad. By the beginning of the Civil War, he served the latter as master
of buildings and car repairs.

In September 1861, Harrison enlisted in the
Thirty-sixth Illinois Volunteer Regiment as a Private. He accompanied that
unit to southern Missouri and was made an acting Lieutenant of engineers
to build defenses around Springfield. During the summer of 1862, he received
permission to organize Arkansas Unionist refugees in southern Missouri
into the First Arkansas Cavalry Regiment, which was mustered in on August
7, 1862. During the war, the First Arkansas Regiment saw action in battles
at Prairie Grove (Washington County) and Fayetteville (Washington County)
and at other battle sites in northwest Arkansas. As Colonel, Harrison commanded
the unit throughout its existence. Fayetteville eventually became the headquarters
of the unit, which was charged with responsibility for the occupation of
Benton, Carroll, Madison, Marion, Newton, Searcy, and Washington counties.
Pacification of this badly divided region involved countering the activities
of guerrilla bands, an endeavor to which Harrison was willing to apply
innovative and controversial techniques.

By late 1864, Harrison initiated the controversial
post colonies, sometimes called farm colonies. Much of northwest Arkansas
was without civil law, and guerrilla activity was rampant. Harrison’s avowed
goal was to relocate residents willing to submit to Union authority to
fortified colonies occupying 1,000 to 4,000 cultivable acres with abundant
water. Families of men willing to swear loyalty to the Union would receive
parcels of farmland surrounding the forts. Harrison claimed that membership
in the colonies was voluntary, but his superior, Cyrus Bussey, reported
that “numerous delegations of old men of loyalty and good character” claimed
that Harrison forced peaceful residents to join. At the system’s peak,
sixteen colonies were inhabited by 1,200 colonists, who controlled 15,000
acres. Most colonies were located in Washington and Benton counties, including
Union Valley in the former and Pea Ridge and Bentonville in the latter.

Bussey, perhaps influenced by the citizen complaints,
was suspicious of Harrison’s motives, thinking that he sought financial
gain through distribution of rations to the colonies or that he was building
a political basis in preparation for a congressional race at war’s end.
Bussey conducted an investigation and effectively ordered the end of the
experiment Harrison had hoped to expand. The issue became moot later in
the spring when the war ended, although some of the residents remained
in their colonies until harvest because crops had already been planted.

Courtesy
of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History/Washington County Historical Society

At war’s end, the First Arkansas was mustered
out, and its leader was rewarded for his service with the brevet rank of
Brigadier General. Harrison then turned his attention to railroads and
politics. In 1868, Harrison announced his candidacy for Congress but did
not actively campaign for the office. In early 1869, he became mayor of
Fayetteville. His tenure was short, however, because his opponents soon
persuaded the legislature to vacate the city’s charter as a way to remove
Harrison. When a new government was created under the state’s general incorporation
statute, Harrison’s successor as mayor was Erasmus Stirman, who had served
as Colonel of the Confederate First Arkansas Cavalry Regiment.

Harrison played a key role in the promotion
of the Pacific and Great Eastern Railroad, a line projected to run from
the Missouri bootheel to the western boundary of Arkansas, near Cincinnati
(Washington County). Harrison took the title of chief engineer for the
company and acted as its lobbyist in the state legislature and the U.S.
Congress. He also lobbied for the larger United States and Mexico Railway,
with which the Pacific and Great Eastern Railroad was to be linked.

As he led a surveying party for his company
across the Crooked Creek area of north central Arkansas, Harrison was approached
by a group of real estate promoters to plan a town for them. In return,
the promoters named the town Harrison, and a nearby post office was likewise
re-designated. After the new town was incorporated, it became the seat
of a new county, Boone, created primarily from parts of Carroll County.

Failing to secure federal or state aid for
his railroad scheme, Harrison accepted an appointment with the U.S. Post
Office Department. After some time as a special agent in Arkansas, he moved
to Washington DC, where he served as Chief Inspector of the Money Order
Bureau. He held this post at the time of his death on October 27, 1890,
of chronic bronchitis, a condition he claimed to have developed during
the war. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
HARRISON, M LA RUECOL 1 ARK CAV VOLSDATE OF DEATH: 10/27/1890BURIED AT: SECTION 1 SITE 214ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY